Students’ Perception and Motivation Towards Programming

This paper discusses the result of a study on students’ perceptions (pre-course and post-course) towards basic programming courses and the relationship between students’ perception, motivation and academic achievement. An online questionnaire was used to obtain feedback from 179 first year students from the Faculty of Information Science and Technology (FTSM) of 2010/2011 session. The results showed that students reported more positive post-course perceptions than the pre-course perceptions andalthough the pre-course perceptions do not affect students achievement on overall, it affects their perceived programming skills. Students who have intrinsic motivation showed excellent performance and perceived high programming skill compare with other types of motivation.